Manitoba Moose

Alexandre Giroux couldn't have picked a better time to be on the verge of becoming an unrestricted free agent.

While his point totals for the current American Hockey League season are simply staggering, the Hershey Bears forward added to his personal collective of hardware and also came up with the most important piece of jewelry, at least at this level: a Calder Cup ring.

The Hershey Bears capped a Calder Cup championship last night with a 4-1 victory over the Manitoba Moose before a crowd of 15,003 at the MTS Centre.

Just as he was during the regular season when he produced 60 goals and 97 points to lead the AHL in both categories, Giroux followed up a regular season with 15 goals and 28 points in 22 post-season games.

During the championship final, Giroux also came up huge, scoring a hat trick in Game 1 that included the overtime winner.

He also set up the game-winner in Game 4 and finished with six goals and eight points in the championship final.

Giroux finished the post-season on a 13-game point streak and established a new AHL record for most goals in a campaign, including regular season and playoffs, with 75.

"I'm sure somebody is going to do it again," said Giroux, who turns 29 in August. "When I go on the ice, I don't think about that. I just try to help the team win. I don't want to be the guy who just gets goals and can't play defensively or can't play physical, especially in playoff-time. I like to get involved in the game."

The parent Washington Capitals are expected to try to get a deal done before Giroux becomes an unrestricted free agent on July 1, but if they don't there should be several teams interested in his services.

"I hope so," said Giroux, originally a seventh round pick of the Ottawa Senators in the 1999 NHL Entry Draft. "I hope the guys in Washington or another team in the league will see that what I did was a good job and hopefully, I get some calls this summer from teams that are interested in me. Hopefully, that leads me to the NHL."

Bears head coach Bob Woods expects Giroux will get plenty of calls, if it comes to that.

"We've seen a lot of amazing things out of him and he's scored some pretty goals," said Woods. "We've witnessed first-hand and he's just a special player. He knows what to do when he's in a scoring position and he's stepped up his game.

"In this day and age, where everybody is looking for somebody that can score goals, somebody is going to give him a serious look."